TFTP's Monochrome March: "The Steve Allen Show" from NBC (Jul. 1, 1956)

Posted to YouTube by user 'balsamwoods'
Length - 58:23

College basketball has March Madness. TFTP: Television from the Past has Monochrome March! 

For the entire month of March, TFTP brings you posts featuring monochrome programs and clips in glorious black-and-white!

This episode of "The Steve Allen Show" is the famous one where Elvis Presley, in one of his first appearances on national television, was forced to sing "Hound Dog" to a hound dog. Steve Allen was famous for denigrating and ridiculing rock music. His disregard for rock--right up until the end of his life in 2000--became a real blind spot for him, as his attempts to (he thought) expose the ridiculousness of the form instead made him look ridiculous. This was the context in which he made Presley serenade the hound dog in this episode.

Allen's prime-time variety show had premiered just a month before this July 1956 episode. He had been host of NBC's "Tonight" since 1954 (the premiere episode of which was featured on TFTP recently), and he did double duty on "Tonight" and this Sunday night variety show until he left "Tonight" in 1957. The Sunday night show competed with the "Ed Sullivan Show" and this booking of Presley was undoubtedly an attempt to score an early ratings victory. (Presley, of course, would soon after make an even more famous appearance on Sullivan's program.)

The episode above begins with a bit between Allen and fellow variety host Milton Berle before going on to a musical number of the song "Picnic", a humorous sit-down interview with then-newcomer Andy Griffith, a viking-themed number by Allen show regulars Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, and a bit by Allen (of questionable taste to us now) where he lampoons an Indian yogi. Allen and guest Imogene Coca play a married couple in a sketch that sends up the "realism" seen in recent Hollywood movies, and finally three-quarters of the way through the episode Elvis makes his appearance.

Presley, after a brief introductory chat with Allen, gamely and in good humor performs "Hound Dog" to the hound dog, wearing a tuxedo to boot. Presley returns, along with Griffith and Coca and host Allen, in a show-closing musical comedy sketch that sends up country and western music.

TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Texaco Star Theater" from NBC (Spring 1949)

Posted to YouTube by user 'TheShootingstar31'

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program every Monday morning to kick off the week.

This week's inaugural Monochrome Monday goes back to the beginning of commercial TV with a 1949 episode of one of the earliest TV classics, Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater". This was the first blockbuster TV series, the popularity of which helped to establish the very medium as a viable form of home entertainment (and gained Berle his famous moniker "Mr. Television").

This episode (from spring of 1949, less than a year into the show's run) features the customary opening and closing jingles sung by the "men of Texaco"; Berle's introductory monologue dressed as an ancient Roman; a fantastic acrobatic trio; Chinese-American movie star Keye Luke (with whom Berle engages in some unfortunate--but for the time, characteristic--stereotyped ethnic humor); a song by Ethel Merman, followed by a sketch with her and Berle as early motorists; tap dancer Teddy Hale; and a show-closing extended series of performances by several different singers and composers highlighting popular standards of the day.

It's a great specimen of the classic variety show of the early TV era--a blend of comedy and music (but also with things like acrobats and tap dancers in the mix), the single sponsor's ads worked into the program itself (as well as its title), the somewhat rough-edged feel of a live weekly TV program, and a broad and boisterous style that played well on the small screens of early television sets.